A sheave is a wheel or roller with one or more grooves along the circumference for holding a rope or cable (hereafter, rope will be used to refer to either a rope or a cable). When supported on its sides and equipped with a rope, a sheave becomes a pulley.
In some applications, the sheave has two or more grooves for holding two or more ropes. The sheave grooves grip the ropes, so when the sheave is rotated, the ropes and the load the ropes support move too.
Over time, as the load supported by the sheave is moved, rotating the rope through the sheave grooves, the sheave grooves wear. Particularly, if one of the sheave grooves begins to wear unevenly, the load maintained by the sheave grooves becomes uneven which may accelerate the wear of a particular sheave groove. Sheaves which are not used for support, such as deflector sheaves or other types of sheaves, may also wear unevenly.
Periodically, a sheave may be regrooved so that all grooves have an even depth of the groove, and uniform U-shape or V-shape (the two shapes in which sheave grooves are typically cut) across all the grooves. In some applications, it can be difficult to test for sheave groove wear, as the ropes or cables themselves may block access to the grooves. Yet such testing is required by sound maintenance practice, as well as in periodic inspections. Further, current regrooving techniques for sheaves are suboptimal.
Accordingly, this application discloses systems and methods for maintaining sheave grooves.